Wednesday, June 01, 2011

"This is not a campaign bus," she [Sarah Palin] said on Fox News. "This is a bus to express to American how much we appreciate our foundation and to invite more people to be interested about all that is good about America." It all sounds like a wonderful commitment to American values and American history, but it's nothing of the kind. In fact, the whole thing could be in breach of a federal law because the United States Flag Code establishes important rules for the use and display of the stars and stripes, the flag of the United States. Under standards of respect and etiquette, it's made clear that the flag of the United States should never be used for any advertising purpose whatsoever. Yet that's precisely what Sarah Palin is doing. She's using the flag of the United States for her own financial purposes. She drapes herself in the stars and stripes and makes millions of dollars in the process. This has got nothing to do with the presidency and everything to do with filling her pockets. And by raising her profile, she raises her income. It is as simple as that.

Now, it's true that observance of the Flag Code is voluntary. One can legally burn a flag as a demonstration of free speech, for example, without fear of criminal reprisals. One can also leave a flag up 24 hours a day, even unlit, and no one except your local Boy Scout troop would likely notice.

But what is not true is that the flag of the United States can be used to promote a product, which clearly leaves the consumer with the impression that the product is endorsed by the Federal government. Some morons on the right seem to skate right past this rather important fact on their way to bashing Bashir for a double standard.

Palin has not announced her candidacy, but has invited the press along on her tour. She has a movie coming out in the next few weeks. She is a, and I'll use the term loosely, "popular" author who can reasonably expect a bump in book sales from the goobers and yahoos that she will encounter in her flag-draped "coffin on wheels."

I coin that, because as she displays her flag, she dishonors and disrespects the men and women who so valiantly died for her to be able to write her books and whine her little whines and allows asshats like Fitzsimmons to waste perfectly good tube socks fapping to photos of her in tight leather pants. If she's going to disrespect dead soldiers on Memorial Day no less, then she ought to be called on it, as Bashir did.

So I suggest l'il Alex pick up a gun, stand a post, and then tell me how much he likes seeing Sarah Palin disrespecting his comrades in arms who died next to him.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing